# 631. Why Your Thyroid Hates Intermittent Fasting + The 7 Skills to Lasting Health — with the Trim Healthy Mamas

An episode of [The Thyroid (and Hormone) Fixer Podcast: Thyropause, Menopause, Metabolism and How to Fix It](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1529800263), 19 May 2026, 50 min.

Audio: https://episode.flightcast.com/h5c66gzp2fk25x034bmkc6m4.mp3

If breakfast has become “optional” and food rules have left you more exhausted than empowered, this episode is going to completely flip the script on what lasting health actually looks like. In this conversation, I sit down with the founders of Trim Healthy Mama, Pearl Barrett and Serene Allison, to unpack the powerful message behind their new book Seven Skills for Lasting Health. We dive into why so many women are burned out from extreme dieting, fasting trends, and all-or-nothing thinking, and how developing sustainable “skills” instead of rigid rules can completely transform your metabolism, hormones, mindset, and relationship with food. What you’ll learn: • Why skipping breakfast may be working against your metabolism • The surprising connection between cortisol, thyroid health, and fasting • How perfectionism quietly sabotages long term health goals • The real reason extreme diets stop working over time • How to fuel your body without obsessing over calories or macros If you want to dive deeper into the seven skills we discussed today, grab the book and connect with Pearl and Serene through the links in the show notes. You do not have to live stuck in food confusion and metabolic burnout anymore. There is a gentler, sustainable path forward. Resources from Pearl and Serene: Pre-Order 7 Skills to Lasting Health: https://store.trimhealthymama.com/product/7-skills-to-lasting-health-preorder/ Grab your Thyroid Fixer here: https://betterlifedoctor.com/ New here? Use code LISTEN20 for 20% off your first order Returning customers can use code LISTEN10 for 10% off SHOP DR. AMIE’S FIXXR® SUPPLEMENTS: betterlifedoctor.com LET'S GET YOUR LIFE BACK...Connect with Dr. Amie Hornaman Book a free thyroid and hormone solution call: https://dramiehornaman.com/pages/book-a-call CHECK OUT MY FREEBIES... JUST CLICK BELOW Thyroid Optimization Guide: https://health.dramie.com/thyropause 7 Day Thyroid Healing Kickstarter: https://fixyourthyroid.com/7daykickstarter Thyroid on Trial: https://health.dramie.com/thyroid-on-trial-optin RATE, REVIEW AND FOLLOW ON APPLE PODCASTS Show your love for Dr. Amie and The Thyroid Fixer Podcast! If you’re enjoying our journey together, I’d be thrilled if you could take a moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts. Your support helps me reach and help more people just like you, guiding them towards their optimal selves! Just click HERE, scroll all the way down, give us those 5 stars, and share what you enjoy about my episodes in a review. Haven’t subscribed yet? Make sure to follow The Thyroid Fixer Podcast to catch all the new episodes that come out every week. Follow HERE and never miss out on a moment of the journey! CONNECT WITH ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Join my exclusive Facebook Group and get questions answered LIVE weekly, Just Fix Your Thyroid, for a Community of HOPE and SUPPORT in your thyroid journey. https://www.facebook.com/groups/dramie/ Like me on Facebook: Amie Hornaman Nutrition and Functional Medicine Subscribe on YouTube: Dr. Amie Hornaman Follow me on Instagram: @dramiehornaman

## Transcript

[0:00] The banner over the whole concept is grace. It's all about just, you know, this is a sustainable, lifelong journey. And you can fall off the cart, you just get back on and there's no shame involved. You just practice a little bit more and little by little, you get better till these skills become a natural rhythm like breathing.
[0:21] Welcome to the Thyroid and Hormone Fixer podcast. If you've been told everything is fine, but you're gaining weight despite doing all the right things, struggling with brain fog, mood swings, low libido, or feeling like a stranger in your own body, you're in the right place. I'm Dr. Amy, the Thyroid Fixer, and I want you to know right now, I see you, I believe you, and you don't have to figure this out alone anymore. We're going to do this together.
[0:48] but I'm also not here to play nice with bad medicine or empty promises. This show is meant to disrupt the entire health space. We're going to challenge the status quo, connect all the dots other providers miss and give you real practical science back tools you can use today. You're not going to get any more recycled biohacking advice, just truth, strategy and hope. Let's get you back to feeling like the badass human you're meant to be.
[1:20] So if you've been told to skip breakfast, fast for 16 hours, just eat less and your thyroid is worse than it was a year ago, today's episode is going to make you feel like someone finally turned the lights on.
[1:36] Pearl Barrett and Serene Allison built the Trim Healthy Mama movement. And they are dear friends of mine, colleagues of mine. They've been on the show before. We absolutely love them. They are skilled authors. I have here their last book, Trim Healthy Wisdom, which I literally keep on my desk.
[1:57] Today, we are talking about their new book, Seven Skills, and this is going to take it to a whole nother level. We're stripping away all of the noise and they're about to tell you why everything you've been told about breakfast and possibly your entire eating regimen is wrong. So hi, ladies. It's so good to have you back.
[2:22] Thanks for having us. And you know, you held up that huge thousand-page book, and then this new book, Seven Skills, is our shortest book we've ever written. It's hard for you to do because you have so much knowledge. It's a miracle. It's really a miracle. I just feel like we got everything we had to say out in that thousand-page thesis, and then we came up with this short book, and it was really said better than a thousand-page book. Well, it speaks to both...
[2:52] both types of readers, the one that wants, but trim healthy wisdom. I mean, this has everything, hormones, thyroid, you name it. Whereas seven, well, I'm going to let you guys talk about seven skills, but you know, sometimes we need just that little handbook to like a quick reference. So what, what inspired you then to write seven skills? What's tell people what it's about? What's the need of it?
[3:16] Today, you know, more than ever, the voice is screaming at you, right, with all the fads, all the what you should be doing, you know, and all the sensationalism things that are coming every 11 seconds into your reels on your screen. And it's like, oh, there's just so much noise that people are so confused and so, you know, in their mind, it's kind of like a battle going on that they feel like giving up and just going and having a corn chip.
[3:42] or something like that because it's just too much information we wanted to cut through all that noise and bring a you know a white flag of common sense you know some some ancient wisdom that harmonizes with some cutting-edge science and saying hey there is a sane path that doesn't have to be so complicated and it's simple and it works
[4:05] Yes, yes, exactly. With the idea of skills, that was kind of new to us because we've always practiced our way of eating and moving in a very non-rulesy approach. But people would come to our plan and get very rulesy about it. And we could never kind of strip them from the rules until we realized, hey, you know what? The way we do things is just a bunch of skills. And the great thing about skills is you can stink at them at first. Yeah.
[4:32] You can be pathetic. Like it's like your daughter learning to play the violin. You want to run out of the room with your hands over your ears. But skills are something we get a little bit better at each day and it takes away that pressure to be perfect. And I think perfectionism is why so many people quit. Yes. I think, you know, they do this 30-day stint of perfection and then somehow they go out with a friend and, you know, have like a...
[4:55] a burger with a white bun. And all of a sudden it's like, throw in the towel. It's all wrecked because it's not about grace in those diets. It's all about, you know, the rules. And we feel like with seven skills, the whole, one of the skills is called actually give yourself grace, but we feel like overarching the banner over the whole concept is grace. It's all about just, you know, this is a sustainable, lifelong journey.
[5:20] And you can fall off the cart. You just get back on and there's no shame involved. You just practice a little bit more. And little by little, you get better till these skills become a natural rhythm like breathing.
[5:33] Mm, I love that. Oh, gosh, there's so much there to unpack. Okay, first of all, I didn't even pick up on that when I saw the name of the book, Seven Skills. But now that you're outlaying it, I'm like, oh my gosh, you're right. It wasn't seven rules. It wasn't seven things you must do right now. It's seven skills that you can develop. And that gives the reader so much grace, especially
[5:55] in this day and age where there's so much coming at us. I actually call it screw it syndrome. I think people fall into screw it where there's, you know, it's like there's this diet and there's that diet and there's GLPs and there's, there's carnivore and there's fasting and,
[6:11] And it's like they're trying, either they're trying something different every day and, you know, just throwing in the towel and saying, oh, screw it. This isn't working. Or they're really giving it their best effort. But then they're being told by Instagram that what they're doing is wrong. And you do, you eventually just go, you know what? Screw it. I'm just going to eat the damn pizza. Yeah, exactly. I don't know what to do anymore. So I just, I love that. So when you were writing this, how did you pick...
[6:36] seven, like, how do you narrow it down to these seven skills, which we'll get into? And like, just as importantly, what got left out that you're like, no, no, no, that's not important.
[6:46] Do you know what's so funny? Do you mind me just running in here first? You usually do. Yeah. So she doesn't mind me being rude. She'll just give me a, you know, tell me off later when we get off. You were going to say slap and you tempered yourself. I tempered. You know what? We didn't actually have to think, oh, we shouldn't have that one. And which one should we choose? Do you know what's so funny? Oh, they flowed, yeah. Seven just flared.
[7:08] Was it? We didn't have to think how many skills are we going to do. It was just there were seven, but now I'm thinking about it. Seven is the number of perfection. And we're not about perfection here, but it just was seven is what –
[7:21] made this book complete. And would you say that too, Pearl? Yeah, never let anything out. Like, I just feel it is very complete. But, you know, if we say so ourselves, but it is. When we go through each one, I don't think that we left anything out. We left intricacies out like, hey, you know, now your book, The Thyroid Fix, is incredible. And it's talking about all the thyroid hormones and the ranges and all that. We didn't go into those details. This is a very basic book on how to live.
[7:50] Yeah, I love that. I love that because you're right. When you develop these seven skills, it's not just about health. It's not just about eating. I mean, as we know, when we improve our entire life,
[8:05] health profile, it has this trickle effect into your relationships, into your family, into your friendships, into your work, into your ability to make money because you just feel better on the inside. So it's so much more about than just aesthetics and health. It really does extend out.
[8:25] It really does. And really this book, like you said, it's more than what you're doing. It's how you're doing it. This book is covered in grace. And when we have grace for ourselves, we have it for our family members too. If we're doing, you know, women have come to this way of eating where we help them balance their blood sugar and get protein and all of this. But if they do that with a stringent mindset and write everyone in this family, you are joining me and get that off your plate and do not bring that into this home.
[8:51] It's never going to last. No, that's high stress. Yeah, so we're just trying to get rid of the stress because we've seen it over and over. We've done it to ourselves too and we've made those mistakes. And for anything, that's why we called it lasting health, for anything to last.
[9:07] It has to be doable every day. And we feel like it's a very gentle approach. You know, it's all about eating, not starving. It's all about celebrating foods and celebrating the food groups. And I feel like that gentle approach is healthy long-term too. You know, of course, we're eating the healthy foods with it. But for metabolic issues...
[9:27] A lot of the reasons why people have increased in hormone issues where they're actually not producing enough and they have to get on these GLP-1s is because of this yo-yo extreme Spartan dieting that actually makes their body not even produce the right increased in hormones. And so I feel like we want this to come out as like a book that gives,
[9:47] gives somebody hope that they don't have to be in this battlefield with food anymore. But we also want to help the new generation. So you don't have to walk in the steps that we did where we kind of wrecked our metabolisms and got so broken, trying so hard. So we really want to have a voice to the generation coming.
[10:05] I love that. And it's so important. It's so important. So we're going to encourage people to get the book, to get the seven skills, but let's dangle some carrots. So of all of those seven skills, give me like the one light bulb skill where everything like kind of finally clicks for the woman.
[10:23] I feel like it's precept upon precept. It builds upon itself. It builds upon itself. But one that we love to start with, and it's the first one actually. We couldn't start without it. Right. It sounds so simple that it's like, well, tell me another skill because I just want to bypass that one because it's just too simple. I don't even want to compute it in my head. And it's eat breakfast. I mean, people would think, what? This is like, is this your ABCs for nursery rhyme?
[10:50] I'm like, for toddlers? No, because so many people are, you know, with their diet, they're educated beyond their common sense. And they're told to skip breakfast. But when we eat breakfast, we actually help our bodies start to trigger muscle synthesis in the morning. And so we're actually feeding our muscles, which is feeding our metabolisms because muscle equals metabolism. And we're actually telling our body to not produce energy.
[11:14] so much cortisol on the second meal effects as we go on in the day. And so eat breakfast, I feel like, is something that grandma could have told us, but she had a lot of wisdom when she told us that. Yeah, and it's not just eat cornflakes or, you know, Captain Crunch. I mean, there's a way to eat breakfast. Yeah, don't eat breakfast if it's going to be that good. No, right. But here's how to eat breakfast. Here's what it looks like. It has protein. And that's the second skill. It goes right into the second skill is eat sufficient protein. Yeah.
[11:42] Because, yes, protein is having a movement in all the social reels, but I think it's very hard to capture why in these eight-second reels all the influences are giving. You know, especially as we women are aging, our protein needs go way up. And like Serene said, without muscle, we have no metabolism. What fuels our muscles is protein. And so we talk about, hey, we're not all about like,
[12:09] you know, high protein and so that we're abusing our bodies, but we are about sufficient. We talk about what sufficient is and how in every meal, that's the first question. It's just an easy skill. We ask ourselves when we go to have a meal or a snack, where's my protein?
[12:24] And that question changes everything for women. Because sometimes women are just so busy and it's like grabbing a bagel and grabbing a little cup of yogurt for lunch and then they're famished in the evening. So it's just like, I haven't had protein. So I'm scarfing pasta and then I'm having corn chips and protein stabilizes everything.
[12:45] Mm-hmm. It does. Oh, I love me some protein, believe me. And I love that skill too. But I'm actually going to go back to that first one because you're saying, oh, you know, people want to bypass it. They just want to skip over what's the next skill. But hold on. So the breakfast one, this is hugely controversial because everyone –
[13:03] Every IG influencer is out there saying you need to skip breakfast. It's not the most important meal of the day. You need the intermittent fast, which we're going to get to also because I want to pick your brain about that. But you basically are the lone voice yelling no. So this is a very important skill. And you've unpacked beautifully as to the why. But this is it is controversial and it is going to make women stop in their tracks and go wait. Wait.
[13:31] This goes against everything I've been told on Instagram. And I love how you go into the why, why we need to start incorporating in breakfast. I feel like eating breakfast takes your body out of that hibernation mode. And it kind of tells it like, wake up metabolism, rise and shine. The harvest is in the field. The sun is shining and you're telling your body it's okay. You can burn calories. And I just really...
[13:56] Pearl has some incredible, she's really good at saying the studies, and I'm not so good. But there's some incredible studies with longevity, when it comes to longevity, when we eat breakfast. Total mortality goes down in breakfast eaters. Pearl, can you bring on that study? Well, I can't like pull the, you know, the reference, but it is true. Breakfast eaters have a greater...
[14:17] longevity than non-breakfast eaters. Now, why? You have to think, why? Okay, so skipping breakfast, our cortisol, as you know, is higher in the morning for most people. Well, breakfast, especially when it has protein, brings it down to a steady level. Now, without breakfast, the cortisol, they've done studies, raises and lasts higher all day long, up until the late afternoon. So, cortisol is
[14:42] Makes us less efficient fat burners. We need cortisol, but we don't need too much of it. It should be just to that balance level. Well, women are going around skipping breakfast trying to lose weight when what they're doing inside their bodies is actually working against that long term. Mm-hmm.
[14:57] And cortisol causes things like heart attacks, stress, or of course mortality goes up. You know, when we have higher cortisol, many risks for disease go up. And when we don't eat breakfast, we're in that catabolic state, right? Because we're not bringing in amino acids.
[15:14] to feed our muscle tissue and to stimulate muscle synthesis, where are we going to get those amino acids? Because it's not just for our muscles, it's for our body. Every organ in our body uses amino acids. So we have to break down our own precious muscle tissue and...
[15:29] to feed and supply our organs with amino acids besides from our muscles. And so I think having your body in a catabolic state is counteractive. It's counterintuitive. So, Irene said something to me one day, you know, when we talk about this skill. I don't even think we wrote this into the book,
[15:44] It's a little bit weird. That's what you did. Now you're going to say it. We were trying to be short, you know, short-winded, but she's like, Pearl, I remember, you know, when I had babies and when that baby wakes in the morning, my first instinct is to feed that baby. My baby is starving. Whatever needs to happen about myself I'll do later, but let me feed the baby. Well, she's like, I look at my muscles when I wake up in the morning as start. They need to be fueled and I'm the mummy of my muscles. Oh, I like that. I make sure they're fed.
[16:14] Yeah, that's my little internal game I have in my head. I'm mommy muscle. Yes, I absolutely love that. And let's go one step further, that high cortisol. As we know, we've talked about it on your show, that comes back and pushes up reverse T3. It hinders that T4 to T3 conversion with the thyroid. So high cortisol can also affect your thyroid. It can affect your hormones. Like you said, your heart, it affects your blood glucose. And this is a real problem in America right now
[16:44] We have 93% of Americans are insulin resistant. And realistically, after hearing you and really kind of thinking through this, it's landing for me. It's making sense. Why don't we bring back breakfast? Bring back breakfast. BBB.
[17:00] Because that would help so much with just that insulin-resisting component, provided they're not starting the day with cereal. Exactly. Exactly. And I feel like a lot of people get put off, too. We have many women coming in like, oh, I just don't want to eat in the morning. You know what? I experienced that. I was never someone who had hunger in the morning.
[17:18] So I don't, we're not telling anyone to get extreme here. And as soon as you wake up, you know, have your big amount of forex or whatever. We're saying, hey, do what you can, but get your protein, girl. Do you know what I do when my feet hit the floor though? Because I am muscle mummy. Yeah. I have immediate EAAs. That's just water. Anyway.
[17:37] That's easy. It's so easy. And then when I mosey along my life and have my shower and do my thing and finally get downstairs, I'll eat breakfast. But it could be like a couple of hours after waking. But immediately I'll have those EAAs because you've got to look after those baby muscles. Right. And that's your way. But we don't tell people they have to do it. If you want to eat an hour after you wake, that's fine. It doesn't have to be five minutes. But you do want to replenish your muscles. You do want to turn down your cortisol. Another thing, too, in this book is we tried to really keep eating
[18:04] the balance between the two wars, you've got your plant-only people these days, and then you've got your carnivore. It's like plants are out to kill you, you know, all these sepanins and oxalates and phytates and, you know, all of this stuff, lectins. And then you've got, you know, you've got the carnivore crowd. Well, actually, they're mixed. You've got your plant-based and then yours. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[18:25] And so we say how, you know, one of our skills is eat more veggies. We're all about how veggies actually clean out your muscle and get rid of those fatty deposits that make insulin resistance more of a thing, right? Right. And so we talk about that. But in the eat more protein, we talk about how what is really the protein that helps trigger muscle synthesis. It's the protein with the luchine, right? That is the muscle boss that really tells the muscle, okay, you can grow.
[18:55] animal kingdom and then celebrating the plant kingdom. Yeah. No, it has to be that combination. Listen, I'm all about if you want to be carnivore and that's working for you and it's just working for you, go ahead and stay on it. But I really truly believe that we need to find that balance somewhere in the middle where we are bringing in plants and we are bringing in those veggies just for you. Like you said, there's benefits there that we're missing out on.
[19:22] For the gut, because that's the one thing with long-term carnivores, that gut dysbiosis, right? That microbiota just depletes and starts to diminish. And it's really our gut that's the filter for all these things we think are so bad about plants, right? All these anti-nutrients. But when our gut is in high working order, it is the filter. And then we just get the benefits of plants. But we can't fix our gut without plants.
[19:48] Yeah. And I think though there's some people, obviously some people can't do gluten, even though, you know, we're all about, well, hey, try God's gluten, sourdough, ancient grains, but still not everyone can do that. And we all have sensitivities and we're not saying to everyone, you must eat every food on this earth.
[20:04] We're saying, hey, we can't get away from our original design. You know, we're past as kids. And God created us as omnivores. We are not carnivore, even if an influencer tells us we are. There are many benefits to a carnivore diet, just as there are many to a plant-based diet. But it's when we take the best of both and merge them. Serena and I jokingly call ourselves meat-eating vegans. I mean, we love plants. We love meats. Yeah.
[20:31] Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's the combination. That's the omnivore part. Yeah. Okay, next controversial subject is intermittent fasting. So people are, the argument for intermittent fasting is the autophagy, the metabolic flexibility. So what is your counter? Because your women aren't gaining weight. They're actually losing it by eating breakfast. So what's the mechanism that you've watched play out in your community for intermittent fasting?
[21:00] We just think there's other better ways for autophagy, like resistance training and getting to sleep on time. I feel like autophagy doesn't have to be done only by extreme fasting. And fasting does the very thing we're trying not to do. It depletes our muscles over time.
[21:19] and puts our metabolism in more of a hibernation mode. And so we get a lot of women come to us and they even say, but fasting worked for me for a while until it didn't. And many times they'll start off with 16-8 or whatever and go down to OMAD one meal a day, and even that doesn't work. And we get them coming to our plan, and their metabolism is at a complete standstill. Absolutely.
[21:41] And we can't help the fact that we kind of wrote the book through the lens of a biblical view. We feel like we were created by the creator and there's a blueprint for our body. And, you know, I feel like that fasting is based more upon maybe like a hunting cat's digestive system, not for a human. And it's like, okay, we go out and we do the hunt and we have the big meal and then we just go rest in a tree branch and we don't eat for another two days.
[22:10] Right. And women are different. Like, you know, we have two kispeptin receptors in our brain. Men have one. So men can do a lot of this more than women can without the repercussions. But women, these are like antennae and they're scanning the environment. And they're like, when is my next meal coming? Do I have the right nutrients? Am I getting enough calories? Am I getting enough protein? And when it's not coming in, the metabolism goes down and the insulin resistance goes up.
[22:39] And we share that in our book. So, yeah. So the fasting thing, it is, it has been so huge. I think women are burned. Yeah. This is the way I feel. I think many tried it and many, many are burned. And I personally don't want to go through my life fasting. I want to eat. I love eating. But I think there's a natural thing. We all fast overnight. That's why breakfast is break the fast. Right. Right.
[23:02] So we're all different. Some of us that overnight stretch might be serene can only go 10 hours. She has this rocking metabolism where she has to eat before bed, like cottage cheese or something. I can go from like seven at night all the way till eight, nine, the next month. I can go up to 14 hours. Usually it's about 12 for me, but it's when you're skipping that first meal. It's when you're going so far up to that 16, that one meal is gone and the muscle fueling in the morning doesn't happen. That's when we say, Hey, you're not doing yourself favors.
[23:32] Yeah. And sometimes you're white knuckling through it. You're miserable. That's going to increase your cortisol. If you're miserable fasting, then you're increasing your cortisol. And this ties into your skill number two, protein. There is no way a woman can get in adequate amounts of protein only eating once or twice a day. It's not going to happen.
[23:55] And we like to see it not just how many grams you're having in a day, but how you're separating it to every few hours. So you're getting a fresh window for muscle synthesis because, you know, it's not about we can only absorb a certain amount to use in our muscles and the rest can just be, you know, peed out.
[24:14] So I feel like it's like if you really want to take care of your muscles like a muscle mummy, I like to think four, I like to do five, but I'd like to suggest four protein fuelings a day, four windows for muscle synthesis. Yeah.
[24:30] four windows of at least three grams of lutein in that meal to kind of meet the trigger. And when Serene says that, when she's saying lutein, you know, some of your viewers might know about it, but it's just, it comes mostly in animal foods where it's that lutein is the amino acid boss. So it makes sure your muscles are synthesized and it's not difficult or mathematical. If you're having a serving, a four to six ounce serving of chicken, tuna, you know, if you're having eggs and egg whites together or something, you're getting it. So it's not like,
[24:59] Let me do my math. Exactly. But now is luchin also in your EAAs that you're starting the day with? Yes. Okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah, three grams. Okay. But we can supplement with it as well. But also if we're focused on the animal foods, we're getting it naturally. Yes.
[25:17] Yes. And protein too has natural high lutein. Beef, you know, all the protein. Really, we're women are really doing harm to themselves as they're using a lot of plant proteins on the market. Yeah. And they're touted, you know, combined combination of this and rice and hemp and all these different things and complete, and it is not doing the job that they're spending their good money on. Takes so much of them to get that two to three grams of lutein that you need to trigger muscle synthesis.
[25:47] And it's so chalky and dry. And when you add water to it, it explodes in this big, dry mass that sticks in your throat. And then it's not as bioavailable. And I've kind of walked through that because I was a staunch raw foodist vegan for decades and was in terrible sarcopenia in my youth.
[26:06] And so, you know, I kind of like feel compassion and feel passion at the same time to talk to those that are kind of in that plant only. I'd like to say rut, but I'm trying to be nice at the same time. Right. Well, I would also say, what is your belly doing with that plant? I remember when I was on the plant-based protein kick as well, you know, I actually thought it was normal for my stomach to randomly speak out loud. Yeah.
[26:34] I mean, it was angry for at least a couple hours after I drank my plant-based protein shake. And it's almost like you chalk it up like, oh, yeah, okay, that's just happening. No, it's not supposed to happen. That is licking your gut. I was a bloated goat. You know, I was very thin as a plant foodist. I didn't have much muscle tone, but I always had a bloated tummy to the point where people would ask if I was pregnant when I wasn't pregnant. But it was all that roughage, you know, just whirling and twirling in there. Didn't have the bricks and mortar.
[27:04] Yes, exactly. Now, okay, for the woman out there that she's trying to lose weight, when it comes to counting calories, I mean, we all, all three of us grew up in the calories in, calories out mindset where we would track our calories and Fitness and Shape magazine would tell us, stay under 1,500 calories to lose weight. You have never, throughout all of your books and all of your philosophies, you've never
[27:32] count calories. You don't cut food groups. You don't macro track. So what is the rule? Like, what rule do you go by to make sure that a woman doesn't necessarily weigh overeat? Because even though it's not about calories in, calories out, you know, there comes a point in which, listen, if you're consuming way too much food, sure, you might tip the scale and not be able to lose weight.
[27:56] We have school number four, which is separate your fuels. And when you're separating your fuels, there is a natural ebb and flow of calories. And there are just two different meal types. Well, actually three different meal types where one is more carb centric, but it's gentle carbs. And so we do encourage to keep it in a healthy window so they're not spiking their blood sugar.
[28:18] Always with lean protein. And that protects, you know, overdoing calories too. And it's always, every one of our meal types is anchored around protein. And that's called the E meal, the one that's more carb centric. And then our S meal that stands for satisfying, that is more of your, you know,
[28:35] beautiful, healthy fats. It's based around fat as your fuel. It's always anchored around protein and you keep your carbs lower, right? So that's your non-starchy vegetables and things like that. And then we have our crossover meal, which is kind of a balance of the two. It's kind of our maintenance meal. People are losing weight too quickly or if they're in seasons of pregnancy or nursing, or they just have a high metabolism, but they want to keep their blood sugar in check.
[28:56] We're anchoring this meal around protein, but celebrating both fuel types. So we teach separating the fuels and anchoring food around protein. That does naturally keep calories in check. And like we said, all of our meal types, we never allow spiking of the blood sugar. Our program is very protective of the blood sugar spikes.
[29:14] And so I think it's the way the way women get it is is more like, hey, I'm just going to celebrate the different food groups and different meals rather than restrict. I'm going to celebrate my fats right now and I'm going to have avocado on my salad with some steak and with some goat cheese and nuts.
[29:31] And I feel so satisfied. But then on another meal, I'm actually going to celebrate my carbs. So I'm going to have a sweet potato. I'm going to have a lean chicken breast. And I'm going to have a salad. And I'm going to really enjoy that macronutrient. And when they look at it like that, it's that grace thing. They don't have to say,
[29:49] restrict, count, do all that, it just naturally falls into line. And that way they get to lose weight, but they get to include all of the food groups and the macronutrients. And that's really the basis of our program here on the 7 Skills to Lasting Health is inclusion,
[30:06] Rather than exclusion. Because I feel like all the noise out there, everything that's bombarding, you know, on our screen, these reels coming in, it's all about excluding. What we should be excluding. Exclusion, exclusion. That's where I fell off, you know, thriving in health my whole life because I was always...
[30:23] excluding something. When I was a raw food vegan, I was excluding the animal foods. And then, you know, I went the other way and then I hardly ate any plants. And then it was always like, you know, butter is evil. No grains are evil. It's always exclusion. But we are trying to encourage include the healthy, clean foods as much as you can. You know, sometimes it's a fallen world. Right. And we have food sensitivities.
[30:46] Sure. But as much as possible, inclusion, because that brings that wonderful gut, right? When we have more inclusion, we have more of a diverse microbiota. Yeah. And here's what I love. And here's why I want every single listener to get this book. I want every single one of my patients to...
[31:04] to get this book, because this has been on my mind for years now, with all the information out there, with the bombardment, with the overstimulation of information, that why don't we just keep it simple? And instead of going to this extreme or that extreme, find that happy medium where we are fueling ourselves with what God gave us to eat.
[31:27] and not excluding these beautiful food groups like fruits and vegetables and meat for the vegans, because God gave us this to eat. Finding that beautiful, happy middle ground just makes sense.
[31:43] It's the one thing that actually makes sense. And even to me, last year, you ladies know I went through my whole cancer journey, and it's like you get bombarded with, well, go low carb and go carnivore, take sugar out of your diet and don't feed the cancer cells. And don't you know fruit's going to feed the cancer cells? And I'm like, but there's antioxidants too, and there's fiber, and I'm a menopausal woman, so I need that for my gut. And the microbiota that you talked about, the beneficial bacteria and bacteria.
[32:11] And it's just like, why don't we just find that middle ground, which you so beautifully are giving us? So that's why I want everybody to get this book, because it's the first thing that actually just makes sense. And it's ancient wisdom. And I think that's why it makes sense. You know, when we turn...
[32:27] When you go back in history, and in the book, we have a whole chapter called When Scripture Meets Science. And we also go back in history, not to just like biblical history. We go back to the way people lived. And they were not the puffed up white processed carbs, but they were eating good carbs. They were eating roots. They were eating fruit from the trees. They were also eating meat. And they were also doing it in rhythm. And I think these things, like you said, they were...
[32:55] We're so, the pressure to go on these extremes is, I mean, we felt them. And like Serene said, we've done it. And there's nothing like ancient wisdom to bring you back to sanity. I mean, because we were, I was in such a broken place in my health. I mean, young and just literally, I had like a dowager's hump. I was so, you know, overrid by sarcopenia. And I was just desperate. And being a believer, I just, you know, opened the Bible, like with my snotting nose and my crying eyes. I was like, oh.
[33:25] I've come here for my spiritual wisdom my whole life, but you've got to have something practical in here, practical for me because I feel like I'm just falling apart. I feel so broken at an age I shouldn't feel broken. It was amazing, you know? It was amazing. You know what? Scripture just was right there, just jumped into my face. And I'm going to paraphrase it, but it was in Deuteronomy, and all the food groups were there. It was like, I give you the harvest of the field, the blood of the grape, the fat of the ram, the milk of the goat.
[33:54] And I'll make you ride on the high country. And I was like, oh, my goodness, this is God speaking to me. It was like light bulb moments. I'm like, it's all there, Serene. Like your whole life you've been excluding and you've been pushing out. But here's God saying, no, I give it to you. I give it as a gift. And it's for you to thrive. And from that moment, we were like, we're going to do inclusion as far as it's possible within our bodies. You know, we're going to include because...
[34:22] I mean, all that exclusion just had me off in the gutter with my help. Yeah. Yeah. And how about that? I mean, whether it is... I love that the Bible spoke to you like that and literally changed your life and changed your health trajectory. So for the woman...
[34:40] that let's say has been beating herself up at every single meal for the last 20 years, what is the mindset shift that she has to have in order for these seven skills to actually stick?
[34:56] I just think we've seen all or nothing so many times, right? And we've all done all or nothing. And I think when you look at it like I get to. So for me, I am so excited about each new day because I'm a foodie and I just love food.
[35:12] So I get to eat these incredible breakfasts. I never feel deprived. I get to fuel my body at lunchtime with some things that I like. It would be different to Serene. I get to move my body wisely. I get to have the proteins. I get to have the carbs. I get to have... What am I missing? Nothing but inflammation and junk.
[35:34] So when we totally get a twist in our minds, it changes everything. And when we get to practice these skills, messing up, who cares, getting back on and practicing them again, I think when we come to this place of all the things we can receive rather than what we have to deny ourselves of, wow, it changes. Yeah. And I think that's so right, Pearl. And I feel like for me...
[35:59] encouraging a woman that may come from my mindset that was just more of a Spartan. Like I was more harsh on my body than you were, Pearl. You were like, yeah, I'll dabble in this and dabble in that. But I was a rules follower. You know, I was like, I'm going to do it and I'm going to do it hard. You know, if I'm going to exercise, I'm going to get in the gym for hours. I'm going to get up at four. You know, it's one of those types.
[36:20] But I feel like encouraging that the message of grace is going to be the one that's going to make this a lifelong, beautiful journey. Because I kind of burnt out with that hardcore approach. And I feel like if you can just...
[36:36] release, you know, because I had to release and say, I don't have to be juggling all this and I don't have to try so hard. Health can be a gift and it can be something that's just comes from a joyful approach, not such a Spartan approach. And so to just put, allow yourself to experience grace is I suppose what I'm trying to say. Allow yourself to realize it can be easy. It can be easy to be healthy.
[37:03] And that speaks to so many women listening now because I'm like you and a lot of my listeners are like us in that it is that Spartan mindset. And it's that driver mindset and it's the perfectionistic mindset where we don't allow ourselves to have grace. But we need to. I need every woman right now to just...
[37:24] take a breath and realize that your health doesn't get better by pushing, by perfectionism, by demanding, by following one set of rules like we talked about in the beginning. It is about developing these skills, finding that beautiful middle ground, bringing in grace for yourself. Everything these ladies are talking about that wrote about in their book is,
[37:49] This is what's going to get you healthy. That Spartan mindset, that go, go, go, drive yourself into the ground, that's going to get you sick. That is ultimately going to get you sick. True. And we've seen it with hundreds of thousands of women. And yet we know these things, but we keep taking back.
[38:04] We keep, you know, that's why we remind, that's why we wrote this book, not only to remind others, but to remind ourselves, you know, when we release. And then we also get into our feminine, which feels really, really good when we receive. You know, as women, we're receivers. I've kind of been learning about this and walking into this. And food is a gift. The healthy foods are a gift. You know, the things that falsely.
[38:27] like presents, like things laden with sugar and stuff. They're not gifts, okay? They're actually very deceitful. But healthy food is such a gift. And when we receive it joyfully, well, I think that's what I was trying to say. That changes everything, at least for me. I wake up in the
[38:44] Yeah, absolutely. Now, this is a more personal question between the two of you. So you're writing this book. Did you fight at all? Did you have to come to a middle ground? Were there any points of contention where you're like, no, that's not going in. Yes, this has to go in. Actually, this book, No Fights. Okay. There is another book and it was, well, actually, it was the wisdom book there, that 1,000-page thesis, but it was a recipe book that's not yet out, but it was going to be attached to it. We almost got divorced. We almost got divorced as sisters. Like literally. Literally.
[39:13] And it was a sourdough fermentation recipe. And I've just done it in my head for years. I raised all my children on it. And Pearl's like, write it out in steps and write it out, like, you know, all in amounts. And I tried to. And she'd be like, it's not clear. And I'd be like, they will understand. They will not understand. It was so bad. She has an interesting voice. Like, I'm sure it wasn't, it's not clear. But it may have come across that way. Yeah.
[39:41] Well, that's good. If that's all you're refining about is fermentation recipes, that's not too bad. So all of the theories and the practical tips are all agreed upon. I love that. They're all agreed upon. But we don't live our lives perfectly, you know, twinsy. Like, you know, I'm the drive-thru, Sue. She's the purest of the duo and women relate to each of us. I've got kipa grains and, you know, like kombucha sponges coming out of my ears. Like, it's my whole house is one fermentation factory and she has a nice can opener in the corner of her kitchen.
[40:10] It works for both of us. I think that's where women really get caught up to thinking they have to be a type. And when the type isn't their natural type, it never lasts. So I think, you know, if you're a convenience person, you can be healthy. If you're a from scratch person, you can be healthy. But many from scratchers, they burn themselves out. And then many of us drive through suit types. Well, then we just abandon wisdom. So I think there's this beautiful middle ground for all of us. We can learn from one another. Yeah.
[40:38] Yeah, it's so true. Yeah. And going back to the fighting issue, Pearl and I, we don't really fight anymore because we spend our whole growing up years sharing a bedroom and fighting. So we kind of got that ticked that box and got it over and done with. Occasionally Nate's looking at us like, I've seen you fight.
[40:55] You know how to find that middle ground. That's beautiful. I love it. So June 2nd, this book hits. So I want every single woman to go out and pre-order because you have a ton of pre-order bonuses with this book. So tell us what are all these beautiful bonuses that they can get when they pre-order the book?
[41:17] Yeah, because there's recipes in the back of the book too. Just ones that are going to really help you kind of get your feet wet, make you think, oh, now this, I can do this. So we go make a bunch of them, videos, making these really simple meals. Those are free. We did little mini podcasts on each of the skills. So if you're an audio person or you want to watch us talk about them way more in depth than we did here today, we did those. That's the basics of it, isn't it, Nate? Yeah, so just like extra information.
[41:45] Yeah. Okay. I love that. I love that. And we're going to put all of that in the show notes. Don't wait until June 2nd. You want to pre-order it now so that you can get the seven skills to lasting health right now. And you can get the entire seven skills companion series free with everything that the ladies just talked about. We'll put all of that, of course, in the show notes.
[42:07] Tell us, besides the book, you have your podcast, you still have Kiora, you're still writing even more books. That's what's keeping you guys busy these days, yes? Yeah, yeah. We're writing a lot of books. I don't know. We just have more mistakes we make, more we understand about things, the more we walk with women. We learn from them a lot too.
[42:37] And when we get information from that, we want to share it. Yes, I know. Yes. And that's what I love about you is as you're learning, you're literally putting that information out. You're constantly re-educating your community, all the women out there.
[42:52] to, okay, here's something new. Here's something new. Just like these seven skills. It's like, this is the handbook. If I would have known about this book before I finished thyroid fix, even in the thyroid fix, I put in there, I'm like, I am not tied to one diet. You need to find the way of eating that works for you. But honestly, I would have just been like, so you want to go out and get seven skills.
[43:13] And just call it a day right there. That's you go in a chapter. I know I read that part and I'm like, she's kind of saying it. But yeah, you were saying, listen, it's so diverse and there's so many conflicting diets out there. But yeah, we can all be unique. Yeah. We are all made as humans and humans eat certain things and we just get to enjoy those certain things every day when we make skills out of them.
[43:38] Exactly. And this book, you know, as we said, it's the afternoon read that we've never been able to do before. Our readers were like, Pearl and Serena, I love what you do. It took me a year and a half to read it. Yeah, or I'm a reader and I really want to give this to my sister-in-law, but I never would because it's too long. Can you write something short? There you go. Finally did.
[43:57] Exactly. Exactly. So I'm going to end with just something a little bit controversial. I want to pick your brain about GLPs because through Cure you offer GLP ones, but how's your stance changed at all? Do you write about that in the seven skills and what is your stance on GLPs since they're so, so hot right now? I mean, hotter than they were even a year or two ago. Yeah.
[44:18] I mean, it's changed our family's life. You know, my husband, he tried everything. He was ticking all the boxes and he had one of those metabolisms that he just needed that little bit of help. He needed more increasing hormones. He used to be in so much pain. All that pain is gone. His inflammation markers are down. He's a different man on his blood panel, just a different man. He looks, you know, on his lab work about 20 years younger. It's just amazing.
[44:46] It's just amazing. And he's lost weight. But he did it so gradual. And we do speak out now about how it's done because I feel like people are using it more in high doses. But I think there's a more nuanced conversation overall. I think when GLP-1s first came out, they'd been around, as you know, for like 20 years as blood sugar management and things like that. And then it came in as weight loss. And the sensationalism, the internet went wild. You've got these two camps.
[45:13] never shall touch. And then over here, you're like, well, hold on. It's working for my friend. She lost 80 pounds in four months. It was like these two sides of a coin and everyone was battling. And I think now, slowly, there's this conversation starting to say, hey,
[45:31] Just like we replace our thyroid and our estrogen, progesterone, if it's low. Some people struggle making incretin hormones. Why not give them that help too if they need it? And so when we came out saying that, we got a lot of pushback. We got a lot...
[45:47] People, half of the people left our group. A lot half, but there was a lot of people very upset with it. But you know what? Many of them have come back and we've been really humbled to hear when they've said to us, you know what? I'm actually, I'm open to that now because I think the science is coming. I don't know what you think, but they cannot replace diet and they cannot replace movement, but they're fulfilling a need. What do you think? Yeah, I'm right there with you.
[46:17] the biggest Jekyll and Hyde drug of our lifetime, where it is helping so many people, changing their life, getting them out of that high insulin, high blood sugar, which we know equals all cause mortality and death mode. And,
[46:34] And then we have the Instagram influencers treating this like a multi-level marketing company where they're, you know, handing out their codes and they're putting, you got Serene Williams jabbing herself and promoting her husband's company. And yeah, I think on the one hand, these, these Hollywood celebrities have taken it too far where they look horrible.
[46:53] They look skeletal. They look 20 years older. They're losing their facial fat. They're losing their precious muscle that we need to keep as we get older. It's like your book, Find the Middle Ground. That beautiful micro dosing or dosing, whatever it is for you, that keeps your muscle, that lets you lose the fat and stay in a healthy place, find that middle ground with them. Yeah. And I feel like people are using it.
[47:20] to either just eat their quarter slice of tiny pizza, like eat low calorie and just make it easier on them or using an intermittent fast. But I feel like they shouldn't be used to shut down hunger, maybe to get rid of food noise that's excessive because some people really struggle with that constant, incessant, like intrusive thoughts about food all day long. So I feel it can really help with that. Yeah.
[47:42] How we kind of like supported my husband to do it was like four to five protein fuelings a day, you know, with three grams of luching. So you're stimulating muscle mass and being in the gym three to four times a week doing resistance training. Because, you know, if you're going to take the benefits of an accretant hormone, you've got to kind of do it with responsibility. Yeah.
[48:02] But I think it's so unique. We don't say that for everyone. You know, I personally needed to get on estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and thyroid. Yeah.
[48:14] I learned about all the benefits, the anti-inflammatory benefits of GLP-1s. And I was like, please me, I don't need to lose weight, but I want those benefits. And so I microdosed, but I just kept dropping weight. I couldn't. The dose was so low, like barely there. I had to go off. So at this time, I don't know if I'll revisit it in the future. I can't do it because I don't like skinny.
[48:37] Yeah. But I want to be strong. But I think I've seen like Serene's husband, like other woman we've walked with. It's just been just a wonderful tool for them. Yeah. We had a friend that was just in constant pain. Yeah. Just constant. Yes. It was just such an oppression on her life, the level of pain. And she didn't even do it for weight loss, but she's completely out of pain. She's just a new woman with a new life. And so I do believe they can be such a blessing. I just think they can't be abused. Yeah.
[49:05] Exactly. 100%. Okay. I just wanted to get your take on that. Beautiful. Thank you, ladies. Well, you know I love having you on the show anytime. For all of your books that you're going to write, you're going to come back on. But for this one, Seven Skills, we're putting all the links in the show notes for everyone to go grab now. Grab it today so you get the pre-order bonus. And thank you so much once again for writing this, for putting it out into the world. It's so needed. It's just so needed. So I love you, ladies. Thank you.
[49:35] And until next time, thanks.

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